Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The way I paint

Every painter has a different method, I am sure. In point form I:
- have a subject matter (always kind of important! lol)
- I then (sometimes) take pictures of the person who is going to be in the painting, or I look for a good picture of someone in a book or magazine (side note: in the painting "Solar Plexus Chakra" I used my daughter Danielle as the woman in the painting and also a large ball of wool for the sphere. Use what you can to mimic your subjects, if need be).
- decide on whether it will be painted on a canvas or a different support
- size is very important....especially if you don't want to be working on it for months!!
- obviously, I always choose acrylic paint as my medium. (Years ago it was coloured pencil...and even more years ago it was oil paint).
- set up your palette, table, water, paint colours (I usually use a colour wheel to help me decide).
- always have a good supply of different size brushes (you tend to collect over the months!)

I then start to paint. I will either have an idea in my head as to what I want to do with the painting, or I just start to put paint on the canvas. It's always scary looking at that blank white canvas. Better to have some paint on it so it looks like you have started. Even if this is just fooling yourself, it does help you to get moving on it. These paintings that I have up on my blog took a variety of time. The Root Chakra took 50 hours, the Sacral Chakra took 40 and the Solar Plexus Chakra took 35. I am hoping that the one I am working on now takes much less time as I am wanting to do four paintings in the next four weeks! Yikes! lol I am sure it will be quite the challenge!!

More on my painting that I am working on now in my next posting.

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